August 12, 2010

July 22, 2010

My colleague and environmental policy expert Brad Plumer is as gloomy on the job as he is cheerful in person. When I see him in the office, I like to tease him by waving my hands wildly in the air and saying "we're dooooooomed." Unfortunately for me and the rest of you, Brad happens to know what he's talking about. Climate catastrophe seems imminent, but most Republicans and quite a few Democrats remain opposed to meaningful climate change legislation.
President Obama and his allies say they will try to pass something and environmental groups are doing what they can to help.

April 20, 2010

Some two dozen executives from large corporations will be descending on Capitol Hill today to make the case against over-regulating derivatives. The “fly-in” is being organized in part by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce through a group called the Coalition for Derivatives End-Users, according to the Chamber’s Ryan McKee. Many corporations use derivatives to hedge against fluctuations in the price of their inputs—for example, an airline might sign a contract to lock in future fuel prices, thereby passing the risk along to someone else.

February 15, 2010

The Democrats’ recent electoral woes have been well-chronicled. Within the last six months, the party has been plagued by high-profile losses (Martha Coakley, Jon Corzine), high-profile retirements (Byron Dorgan, Marion Berry), and, yes, even high-profile deaths (Ted Kennedy, John Murtha). Stack those on top of a faltering economy, a stalled-out Congress, and a pissed-off populace (to name just three bits of bad news), and the first Tuesday in November is looking nasty.

January 07, 2010

WASHINGTON -- A politically shrewd Senate Democratic staff member chatting about the future of health care negotiations stopped in midsentence late Tuesday afternoon as news flashed across his computer screen. "My God," he said. "Byron Dorgan is retiring."
It was a thunderclap moment in the politics of 2010, an unfortunate twist for Democrats already looking at a difficult election year.

December 18, 2009

Democrats managed to avoid a big blow-up with Pharma this week when the Senate struck down Byron Dorgan’s drug reimportation amendment on Tuesday. But by promising to close the Medicare Part D doughnut hole in the final bill, the Democratic leadership has effectively deferred, not avoided, a possible showdown with the industry.

December 11, 2009

I agree that Byron Dorgan’s reimportation amendment is quite a roundabout way of lowering the exorbitant prices that Americans pay for prescription drugs: rather than have our own government push Big Pharma to bargain prices and give us a better deal, we would be able to piggyback off the success of other countries in doing so.

December 11, 2009

Of all the different industry groups scrambling to shape climate policy in Washington--from electric utilities to Detroit automakers--one stands out as a bit unexpected: Wall Street. Financial giants like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have enlisted, all told, more than 100 lobbyists to roam the Capitol and influence the debate over how to curb greenhouse gases. There’s a reason for that: Any cap-and-trade bill that puts a limit on emissions and allows polluters to buy and sell permits will create a vast carbon market.